City Council cuts Mack's salary, mayor may veto

The pay-reduction ordinance reduces the mayor’s annual salary from $126,400 to $60,000. Mack could veto the ordinance in an attempt to prevent it from becoming law. City Council would need at least five votes to override a veto.

Councilmembers Zachary Chester, Marge Caldwell-Wilson, George Muschal and Phyllis Holly-Ward voted to pass the pay-reduction ordinance. The three members who voted against it were Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, Kathy McBride and Alex Bethea.

“I think he’s doing a horrible job,” Reynolds-Jackson said of Mack. But she didn’t support the salary-reduction ordinance, saying the mayor was elected and is entitled to “due process.”

“I believe the ordinance is too weak to do what it is to do,” Reynolds-Jackson said. She suggested the council could pay Mack to resign if the goal is to tender Mack’s resignation.

Reynolds-Jackson, who represents the East Ward, tried to get the salary-reduction ordinance pulled from the docket to work on crafting another ordinance with stronger language, but her colleagues rejected her motion.

Federal officials arrested Mack Sept. 10 on charges he conspired with others to extort $119,000 from a Hudson County developer. The mayor, who is free on $150,000 unsecured bail, has been under federal investigation since September 2010 and earlier this year had his home and City Hall office raided by the FBI.

City activist Dion Clark, who has been one of Mack’s biggest critics, said he didn’t support the pay-reduction ordinance, saying it was a personal attack on Mack and unfair to Mack’s household. “Let’s not make this personal,” Clark said.

Mack is a married father with four young children.

Robert Chilson, a city blogger and local government watchdog, said the reasons to cut Mack’s salary were the same reasons to not give Mack a pay raise. “He’s a part-time mayor, so let’s pay him part-time salary,” Chilson said.

In January, Mack asked City Council to boost his annual salary to $154,000 and also give raises to high-ranking officials in his administration. Council declined to act. Mack never got the raise he wanted.

Local government watchdog Jim Carlucci said Mack has been “missing in action” during the Superstorm Sandy crisis. “There is nothing wrong with reducing his salary. You have the power to do so, and I encourage you to do so,” Carlucci said.

“He has not earned his salary. He does not deserve it,” North Ward Councilwoman Caldwell-Wilson said. “If he was thinking about the taxpayers of this city … he would step down and not be an embarrassment to the city.”

West Ward Councilman Chester said cutting the annual salary by $66,000 is part of his plan to reduce the Mack administration’s proposed 19-cent tax rate increase to a 10-cent tax rate hike. “I support cutting the mayor’s salary based on what this ordinance says,” Chester said.

The ordinance to reduce Mack’s salary says “City Council finds that it is in the public interest that the compensation of the office of Mayor be adjusted and fixed at an amount commensurate with the current economic circumstances of the City of Trenton.”

Councilwoman-at-Large McBride said the salary-reduction ordinance would increase the burden on city taxpayers because Mack would respond to the $66,000 pay cut by using taxpayer-funded attorneys to challenge the ordinance in a court of law, which McBride said could cost $300,000.

City resident Shaheed Morris supported cutting Mack’s salary, saying that Mack’s “interest isn’t the City of Trenton. His interest is getting out of debt.”

“It’s very clear he likes being mayor, but he doesn’t want to do the work,” said city activist Michael Walker, who supported the pay cut ordiance.